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Predictive intelligence company 6sense raises $20M

Before last year, no one knew what 6sense was. Now one of the darlings of the B2B data world has announced that it has raised an additional $20 million in funding. This means that the predictive intelligence platform has now raised $36 million in just a year.

This round of funding was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with existing investors Battery Ventures and Venrock also participating. The company said it will use the new funding to grow its development and data science team, accelerate marketing and sales investments, and expand customer engagement in new vertical markets. The company also plans to host its first annual user conference in July.

6sense is led by CEO Amanda Kahlow, who attributed the success of the company to results. Early identification of prospects is becoming more and more important as B2B buyers increasingly wait until the end of their purchase journey to contact vendors. 6sense predictions allow marketers to identify prospects early and re-gain control, and predicts with 85 percent accuracy who will buy, when and how much, Kahlow told FierceCMO.

"B2B marketing and lead generation is broken; less than 1 percent is converting," she said. "If you wait for people to get deeper into their decision-making process you don't have a chance as a marketer to influence them."

6sense clients, including Cisco, Dell, NetApp, VMware, NetSuite, CSC, Lenovo and CBS Interactive, have been seeing results like a nine-times increase in marketing-to-sales qualified lead conversions; two-third fewer sales touches to convert leads to opportunities; and a 70 percent boost in new prospects.

Kahlow said 6sense differentiates itself from other vendors in its space because it does more than just lead scoring.

"What they're really doing is waiting for the lead to come in—which is too late—and they score it against static attribute data," she said. "It's not going to help you get new prospects, it won't help you get in early, it's not going to help you get into new markets. What it will do is help you prioritize the known against the types of individuals and types of companies that you're most likely to sell to, which is a step forward but it's not a leap forward. They will help you be smarter about what you do know, but we'll help you with what you don't know."

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